What remains through the winds
by stilljustme
Summary: Complementary part to "2,000 years" but can be read alone as well - in the realm of death, Milo muses about his life, especially in his last days.


_**The song for this story is "In her eyes" by Josh Groban.**_

So there are gods after all.  
I doubted their existence, but they are real, and they are cruel. At least mine.  
I hope Cassia's gods are less thirsty for blood and death and the sound of men crying in pain, but I do not dare to ask. There are no answers down here.  
We are only shadows, thin air spread through a world of cold, black and red blurs in a howling wind. Some nights I hear horses whining, and see them galloping at the horizon. Saved souls, the wind calls them, thin air like I am, with the voices of my parents.

Saved souls. I guess I won't have to look for Virtus, then. A horse that abandons its rider… I would have killed him if it wasn't so useless. He could have saved her.

Cassia. I haven't heard her voice in the wind, through the ages that might have passed since the world burnt… time has no meaning here and neither do our lives, our memories… we were born in blood and screams and pain, and in blood and screams and pain we end, and in darkness.  
This is what I am, and what I was. For a long time.

_She stares through my shadow  
She sees something more  
Believes there's a light in me  
She is sure_

I can't understand what she saw in me. Sometimes I think she was only misguided, blinded by the need to find something good in the world. In me.  
My people knew, and every gladiator knows, too, that death is mercy where life is torture, but I would never have expected a Roman to see that, left alone a woman.  
Then of course, as she was so insistent to remind me, even when nobody was left to care, she was not a Roman. She was a daughter of Pompeii.

A free woman, I guess, is what she claimed to be. Free of Corvus and the life he wanted for her. At least this we could give her, Atticus and Ariadne and me.  
Freedom to die.

I keep listening through the winds, searching for her voice, and sometimes I am sure I hear her, chiding me about her city, her life, my life, our death… I know it is only a memory, a last echo of my life sounding through death, clear and confident. I always thought it would be blades clashing, or maybe Corvus' laughter, for that was what most of my dreams consisted of. That was what brought me through the agony the Romans call delight, what made me become the warrior my father would have followed.  
It was Cassia, though, whose voice I kept closest to my heart, closer than my own voice, my face, my story… it is her who made me become a man my father would have been proud of. Killing is easy, I would not have needed an arena to know that.  
But living… living was something I wasn't up to until I met Cassia.

_And her truth makes me stronger  
Does she realize  
I awake every morning  
With her strength by my side_

She gave me a reason to live another day, a reason to _want_ living another day. Never since Corvus had my family slaughtered had I questioned what I was, or what my destiny was.  
It was her who made me see there could be more to life. Not love, not wealth, not like Cassia had it and dreamt of it for us, but… a life of my own. She was so sure to look at a person when she looked at me, not just a slave, a trained fighting animal, but… a man.  
I never thought I could be an ordinary man, but she did. And whatever else she believed to have found in me, she kept seeing it even when the sky darkened and collapsed and our world was shattered to burning pieces. She saw and made me a man.

_I am not a hero  
I am not an angel  
I am just a man_

How could I not love her for what she did to me? I know there was nothing but death waiting for me. Of course, death is the destiny of all of us.  
Maybe even for Cassia's gods.  
She cried for them but they didn't answer, and I felt her faith crumble and fall as I held her close, leaving her lonelier than I, in all my times of fighting, had ever been.

My Cassia. I had been a monster, and she made a man out of me.

_Man who's trying to love her  
Unlike any other_

I would have given everything that remained from our world to save her, but there was only so little I could give. My life. Moments of freedom and hope, and of all the love I had in me.

_In her eyes I am_

What is love but the safety of knowing that your life has not been in vain?  
When Virtus gave up I knew I was saved, doomed as I was. I had learnt, with Cassia's help, to worship my parent's sacrifice, my life that had been spared. I would not lose it for Corvus' or any other man's pleasure but I would give it as a thanks to the woman who filled it with light.

_In her eyes I see the sky and all I'll ever need  
In her eyes time passes by and she is with me_

I made my decision, and Cassia made hers. She chose to die with me. I do not, will not blame her for letting go of the life I had only so recently learnt to love again. Who could say if she would have survived on her own? Who can say if our world still exists?

We are only shadows, thin air spread through a world of cold, black and red blurs in a howling wind. It is only by the new voices creeping through the mist that I can tell there are still people dying, so there have to be people still living somewhere.  
If we had lived, would we have been together? Would Cassia have healed me enough to live a life in peace, and would I be strong enough to be the man she needed me to be?

_I am not a hero  
I am not an angel_

Sometimes when the darkness gets too cold, I'm afraid she chose to die because we'll never know. Where there is no chance of answering, questions lose their meaning.  
I forgot to ask life for luck and beauty when I was beaten bloody by other prisoners. Cassia made me ask again, for another dawn, another breeze of fresh air, another moment to look at her.

_I am just a man  
Man who's trying to love her  
Unlike any other  
In her eyes I am_

I am a shadow now, but it is the shadow of a man. A man who died in freedom, and not in fear but in love, and the feeling of mercy, because I had fulfilled my promise. I had saved Cassia, as she had saved me, long enough for each of us to make our own decisions. We both died the happiest we would ever be, free and in love and not in need to ask questions anymore.

I was enough, in the end, enough to live a life of my own. Enough for Cassia.

_In her eyes I am _


End file.
